Wednesday, June 27, 2012

TABUK
-- Tabuk police denied recent rumors of a young woman who has been spreading
the AIDS virus by seducing men. The woman, said to be a Syrian national who
entered the Kingdom illegally, was alleged to have lured men and teenagers into
hotels and furnished apartments with the aim of transmitting the virus to them.

According
to police, the rumor spread via social networking sites. The official spokesman
for Tabuk Police, Maj. Khaid Ghabban, said police investigated the rumors and
were led to a dead end.

“This
is purely fictional and not reality,” said Ghabban while urging people to
verify stories before passing them on as fact and contact authorities for
accurate information if they were in doubt. -- SG

A
concerned resident called Bochum
police at 11 pm on Sunday, worried that someone was trying to get into the
house with a drill. The noise was so loud, Die Welt newspaper reported on
Monday, that the tiles in his flat were vibrating.

He
joined the officers in scouring the house to track down the mysterious noise,
which grew ever louder the further down the building they were.

Eventually
they ended up in the building's communal cellar, expecting to find a determined
burglar armed with an electric drill.

But
on entering there was nothing to be seen apart from a lone vibrator that had
fallen off a shelf, turned itself on and rolled up against pipes. [...]

Police
called to a flat in Berlin
by neighbours who said it sounded like someone was using an electric drill
through the night smashed down the door to find a vibrator had switched itself
on and was jiggling around on the floor.

Officers
who answered the desperate call of the neighbour tried repeatedly to contact
the 23-year-old woman whose flat it was, according to a report in the Berlin
Kurier on Saturday.

But
they could not get a response, and eventually decided to break in the door in
an attempt to find out what was going on in the flat.

"You
could hear the noise out on the street," one neighbour was quoted as saying.

When
the officers smashed their way into the flat they found nothing more dangerous
than the vibrator which was doing its best on the floor.

Now
the young woman is not only going to have to face her neighbours when she
returns home she will also have to pay for the smashed door, the paper said.

It
was a blood-boiler of a story, a menacing tale of government gone too far: The
Environmental Protection Agency was spying on Midwestern farmers with the same
aerial “drones” used to kill terrorists overseas.

This
month, the idea has been repeated in TV segments, on multiple blogs, and by at
least four U.S.
congressmen. The only trouble is, it isn’t true. [...]

CAIRO
-- Rumor had it a devious conspiracy was afoot: Egyptians voting for a new
president Saturday were being tricked into using pens with disappearing ink so
their choice on the ballot would vanish before it was counted. [...]

The
impact of social media was evident in Bogalusa
Thursday after a message posted on Facebook prompted rapid and widespread calls
for the boycott of a local store, and a small group of people assembled outside
the establishment waving American flags and telling their story to passers-by.

Inside,
Savi, the East Indian owner of SP Truck Stop, the former Duval’s located across
Louisiana Highway 10 from the American Legion Home, was upset and confused.

The
Facebook message was a forward from a woman who sent a mobile phone message
claiming that her husband was in line at the store and heard a uniformed member
of the National Guard told “We don’t serve your kind.”

The
Facebook messenger then called for a boycott to “force them out of business,”
and invited people to “share.” [...]

On
Friday, the day after a posting on Facebook prompted dozens of flag-waving
protestors to assemble in front of a store that allegedly refused service to a
uniformed member of the National Guard, a Louisiana National Guard spokesman
said he had heard nothing, from his people, of such a slight. [...]

Thursday, June 7, 2012

BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhua) -- A rumor spread in recent days
saying that people need to set off firecrackers and eat canned peaches to save
their children. Although it sounds like absurd superstition, it was believed by
some people and disseminated around Beijing's
neighboring areas. [...]

POPLAR
BLUFF, Mo. --
Five teens inside a Jeep were playing a game, based on ghost legends, when they
parked on railroad tracks just after midnight Tuesday morning.

"They
were playing a stupid game called 'Ghost Train,' and the object is to get
scared, kind of like telling stories on Halloween," said Butler County
Coroner Jim Akers. "The game was to park on the tracks, let the windows
fog up inside and let your mind play tricks on you."

But
the game took a deadly turn when a real Amtrak train approached and the driver
couldn't restart her vehicle, Akers said. Three of the teens got out safely,
but two girls in a panic couldn't unbuckle their seatbelts in time. [...]

On
Tuesday night, thousands of Iranians headed to their rooftops to look at the
sky in the hopes of seeing the Pepsi logo appear on the moon.

In
the past few days, rumors had swelled on Iranian websites and social networks,
saying that Pepsi Co. was going to shoot powerful lasers at the moon to display
the brand’s colors on its surface. [...]

KARACHI/TURBAT:
Thousands of old one-rupee coins were sold for millions of rupees in the Makran
region on Tuesday in what became a ‘gold rush’ in the area. Throughout the day,
people spent their time looking for the humble golden-coloured coin which was
being sold for as much as Rs1,000 in some cases -- though no one quite knew
why. It was rumoured later in the day that it was being smuggled to Iran
which was buying it because “it contained uranium”. Regardless of whether or
not there was any truth in the story, the frenzy persisted all day.

“I had heard another rumour
in the morning that jewellers are buying it because it’s full of gold,” said
Murad Baloch, a beggar in Turbat. [...]

Karachi -- If you have a handful of old one-rupee copper
coins stashed away in a dusty drawer or a piggy-bank, congratulations! You
could soon become a millionaire. That is, if you believe some of the wild
rumours circulating in the city. [...]

SWAT: The one-rupee coin might be much more
valuable than it seems, or at least that is what many in Swat have been led to
believe. Rumours that the coins contain gold caused a stir in Swat Valley,
with people clamouring to get their hands on it, some paying as much as Rs50 to
Rs100 for a single coin. [...]

How
much is a one rupee coin worth? Up to 2500 rupees if you believe the rumours
sweeping Pakistan
that the humble coin had inadvertently been made with gold instead of the usual
tiny percentage of copper. [...]

This
is an amusing story from Pakistan.
A rumour has taken hold that the old 1 rupee coin is worth substantially more
than the 1 rupee face value due to the metal content. Thus people are
purchasing them at higher than face value and then trying to pass them along.

What
amuses me about the story is that it is in fact true that the coins are worth
higher than face value: but for very different reasons than those that are
floating around. Indeed, I can see a plausible explanation for how the whole
rumour started. [...]